Create a Google Sitemap for Your Web Site

Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site to be constantly indexed and updated by Google.

This article will discuss the benefits of implementing this new technology, who should use it, how it works and how to create a Google Sitemap for your web site.

Benefits of having a Google Site Map

1. Speeds up the discovery and addition of your web pages in the Google index.

2. Enables Google to quickly find web pages that have been recently changed.

3. A method for your site to be listed and appear quickly in Google.

4. Helps Google to keep search content fresh, so people have the most up to date information available.

Who should use Google Sitemaps?

All site owners can use Google sitemaps whether you have one page or millions of pages, however it's mostly geared towards people that make frequent changes to their web pages.

Normally web pages on a large site will not all get indexed because the links are too deep within the site. By including all your pages in the Google Sitemap you have a better chance of them all being indexed as Google thrives on fresh content. According to Google, it won't increase your site's rankings.

How does it work?

Google sitemaps are created using XML (Extensible Markup Language). This is a coding language similar to HTML(though a little more complex). It is often used these days in syndicated feeds or blogs.

Here is the sample XML code you would include for each page of your site:

http://www.yoursite.com/
2005-07-15
monthly
0.5

(remove periods for code to work)

Here is a breakdown of what each line represents:

location - name of your webpage ie http://www.yoursite.com

last modified - when you last modified the page.

change frequency - tells Google how often you modify that particular page, whether it's never, weekly, daily, hourly, monthly or yearly.

priority - sets the priority you want Google to place for that page on your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle.

This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Certain pages on your site may have more significance than others because they are updated more often ie home page, articles page.

How to Create a Dynamic Google SiteMap XML File

It would take a long time to create your Google Sitemap by hand especially if you have a site that contains 1000s of pages.

Fortunately Google provides the Sitemap Generator that allows you to generate a sitemap very quickly. It's a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Other Sitemap Generators.

Google has also compiled a list of third party generators.

Personally I use the free sitemap generator It's simple to use and quickly produces the necessary XML code for your site.

Here are the steps on how to create your Sitemap using this free Sitemap Generator:

1. Go to http://www.sitemapspal.com and enter your site's address.
2. Copy the code that it generates for your site and paste it into notepad.
3. Save the text file as sitemap.xml
4. Upload this file to the root directory (same place as your home page) of your web server.
5. Open up a Google Site Map account and submit your site's address.
6. Every time you modify a page or pages, login to your Google account and click on the resubmit button.
7. Repeat this procedure for all of your web sites.

Conclusion

Google is still the largest and most accessed search engine on Net. Each year millions of web sites get added to Google making your site harder to find. Creating a Google Sitemap will help your web pages stay fresh in Google's index.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

More Site Promotion Articles

Ideal Software Archive Website
How to build the ideal website for software archives. View from developer.

Easy Content Building for the Lazy Webmaster
Free content builder. Articles are the best way to add free content to your site.

Internet Directories to Improve Link Popularity
Description: one way of jumpstarting you link campaign is to get directory links. Building links, by listing your website in the search engines and directories, is one way of increasing your link popularity, especially if yours is a new site or one with no inbound links.

Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No One
1. Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No OneIf you do not target your offer, it will confuse your customers.

Make Sure The World Sees Your Website
You have spent hours creating a HTML masterpiece, you have posted it to your web host and showed your friends and family your work of art. As much as your friends and family love your new website your site will not be pulling in any profits for you unless the rest of the internet world knows it even exists.

Promote Your Site through Niche Directories
Maybe you are a Doctor or a lawyer. You've built an excellent web site that looks good, has the potential to make huge sales and is well optimised for the search engines.

Restaurant Website Promotion - How to Boost Your Business Using Tested Online Marketing Tactics
Being a restaurant owner means you are always interested in getting more people into your restaurant, whether that be return customers or new customers, hopefully always a mixture of both. Fortunately, the Internet can help you in your marketing goals and not cost you a lot of money.

Local Business Website Promotion - How to Skyrocket Your Business with Area Specific Traffic
If you are a local business that gets most of your business from local traffic, it is obviously important to target in on those visitors search for your product locally. This is a vital part of your marketing campaign because you get your business from those who live locally, this is your target market.

How To Promote Your Online Store
OK. So you took the leap and started your online store.

Free Website Promotion Guide - Website Promotion Mistakes
When webmasters have created their final master piece, their next step is to promote, promote and promote. This is a vital step in survival of your website and will increase your sales and visitors.